For solid waste management in general,

NEA’s incineration plants and Semakau landfill

The National Environment Agency (NEA) has, in close partnership with key stakeholders in the Private, Public and People (3P) sectors, adopted strategies and programmes to address this problem. These strategies are:

• Volume Reduction through Incineration;

Incineration reduced waste volume by a drastic 90% in a short time. The first incineration plant was commissioned in 1979. Since then, three other bigger plants followed in quick succession—1986, 1992 and 2000—to meet the ever-increasing waste loads.

• Waste Recycling and Reduction of Landfilled Waste;

Even as incineration offered us an effective, though expensive, technical solution to our waste situation, projections showed that we would have still exhausted all our landfills on the main island by 1999. We therefore had to look beyond, to enclose a sea space eight kilometres south of the main island, and at great expense, to build our sole remaining landfill off the shores of Pulau Semakau island.

• Waste Minimisation

Waste recycling must be actively promoted in the industrial/commercial sectors and in households, to reduce the waste disposed of at the incineration plants and landfill. This is done through a three-pronged approach of engaging the industry, community and schools.

Industry Participation

The NEA promotes waste recycling by conducting talks, running awareness programmes targeted at businesses, and providing recycling information and data. It also worked with the largest owner of industrial land and ready-built factories, JTC Corporation, to set up recycling facilities in all its 21 flatted-factory and nine terraced-workshop industrial estates.

The Singapore Land Authority also helped by allocating some 20 hectares of land at Sarimbun for recycling activities. Sitting on a closed landfill, the Sarimbun Recycling Park (SRP) is operated by NEA. To date, the SRP has been well utilised for various recycling activities, such as composting of horticultural waste and recycling of construction and demolition waste.

NEA administers the S$20 million “Innovation for Environmental Sustainability” (IES) Fund that was set up by the Government in 2001 to promote the adoption of innovative environmental technologies that contribute towards Singapore’s long-term environmental sustainability. In this regard, waste minimisation is one area targeted by the IES Fund. To date, 15 Singapore-based companies had tapped the IES Fund for funding of several waste management and recycling test-bedding projects. Some of these projects include the production of pre-cast concrete drainage channels using recycled aggregates; the conversion of horticultural waste into packaging materials; and the processing of ladle furnace slag, a by-product of the steel making process, into road construction materials.

The waste recycling industry in Singapore includes companies with the capability to recycle and process electronic waste, food waste, wood waste, horticultural waste, used copper slag, construction and demolition waste, ferrous waste and plastic waste. There are also companies that can facilitate the recycling of textile waste.

Textile waste collection and recycling companies

 

Community and schools involvement

Changing mindsets and influencing behaviour is important for sustainability, but this takes time. To do so, NEA has been engaging residents, grassroots organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and schools to impress upon the community the need to practise the 3Rs—reduce, reuse, recycle—for resource conservation and to achieve a sustainable waste management system. One such awareness campaign is the annual Recycling Day, which aims to reinforce the need to recycle waste by involving schools, community, NGOs and recycling companies.

NEA launched the National Recycling Programme (NRP) in April 2001 to provide a convenient means for residents living in public and private housing estates to recycle their waste. Under the NRP, public waste collectors are required contractually to provide recycling bags or bins to every household for storing their recyclables and to collect the recyclables door-to-door and fortnightly on scheduled days.

In addition 1,600 sets of centralised recycling depositories have been placed in the common areas of all public Housing and Development Board (HDB)¹ housing estates to complement the door-to-door collections. This covers about 85% of the population centres of the country. With approximately one set to every five blocks of flats, most residents would be able to access these centralised recycling depositories within 150 metres from their flats to deposit their recyclables at any time of the day.

This network is supplemented by another 2,200 recycling bins placed in public places with high human traffic. Such places include locations outside train stations, food courts and food centres, bus interchanges, the airport, and pedestrian malls.

Environmental awareness has to be inculcated from young. As such, Singapore’s waste management story is incorporated into the school syllabus, including visits to NEA’s incineration plants and the Semakau Landfill.

NEA launched the Recycling Corner Programme (RCP) for schools in September 2002 to inculcate the habit of the 3Rs in students. Recycling bins for paper, drink cans and plastic bottles are placed at Recycling Corners located within school premises. As of 2007, 95% of all schools have recycling facilities.

Under the RCP, students take charge of the Recycling Corners and put up interesting information about the 3Rs. These activities help to generate interest and foster a keener sense of ownership. Activities with recycling themes are held regularly to sustain interest, including competitions, environmental camps, field trips, workshops, and speech writing contests on different aspects of the environment, including waste minimisation and recycling.

To instil a sense of environmental ownership of the recycling programme, students are identified and separately trained to be Environment Champions. These Champions are responsible for various environmental programmes in school such as conducting talks on the environment, and assisting in the planning, organisation and running of recycling and other environmental activities.

Call for more environmental education in the textile industry

A lack of education on proper recycling, cross-contamination of recycling bins is a problem.

People should practise proper recycling habits by bagging recyclables like clothing waste and sealing it thoroughly to avoid any cross-contamination